He saw the five specks increase their speed and knew that they had sighted him again; they angled slightly and he watched them draw gradually together, their courses converging on the center of his line of flight till they were once more running well bunched,—and gaining.
His lead was being steadily cut down, the gap perceptibly lessened; the specks showed larger with every backward glance till every dog was clearly visible. Shady was fleet but her speed was no match for Breed's and he would not leave her. The high-pitched sinister yelps sounded from behind him as the eager dogs closed up, putting forth every effort to end the race before the wolves reached the choppy badland breaks at the far edge of the flat. Shady's pace was lagging, and they gained the first gulch of the broken country a bare fifty yards ahead of the leading hound.
The gulch feathered out into a maze of branching draws and Shady lost Breed on the first sharp turn and ran on alone while the dogs streamed past after the yellow wolf.
Breed slowed his pace, fear for Shady's life surmounting even the fear for his own, but as the lead dog flashed into view without any sound of a fight behind him, Breed knew that his mate was safe and he turned on the reserve speed he had not been free to use while she ran with him.
The country ahead was a tangle of small flat-tops, crisscrossed by a network of badland washes and cut-bank draws, and for two miles he eluded the dog pack by sheer brainwork and cunning. But the hounds pressed him hard. Their speed was greater than his own and each time they lost sight of him they spread out both ways. Whenever he crossed a flat-top bench some one of them always sighted him and bored straight for the spot, and his team-mates, noting this sudden burst of speed, wheeled as one and fell in behind him.
Breed's one aim was to reach the hills, knowing that once among the trees he could shake them off. His course led him ever nearer to the base of the spur but he knew at last that he could not make his goal. His muscles had lost their spring and his breath came in leaky gasps; the dogs would pull him down on the first sagebrush slopes of the hills before he could gain the shelter of the trees.
He broke cover and started up the last long sloping bench that led to the base of the spur. The mouth of every gulch behind him seemed to belch forth a dog and they raced across the bench, spread out for two hundred yards.
Then Breed sprung one last desperate trick,—a coyote trick. A badland wash intersected the flat squarely across his route and Breed leaped to the bed of it and fled fifty yards along its course, then flashed into a narrow coulee that led straight back toward the dogs. The draw was shallow, with scarcely sufficient depth to cover him, but the dogs did not suspect and as they darted on ahead Breed doubled back through the very center of the pack. He ran with the last of his strength, crept from the sheltering coulee and leaped into the center of a heavy clump of sage where he crouched flat and peered out at the puzzled dogs. Of all the beasts there are but few with the brains to plan such a coup and the nerve to carry it through when winded and played out,—and with certain death the penalty for a single slip. The ruse would not have fooled a trail hound for an instant, but with sight-hunting coursers it worked.
Breed watched the dogs swing wide and scour the country off to the right of him till they appeared as swift-skimming dots in the distance. Then one of them lined out with increased speed as he topped a ridge. One after another Breed saw them flash over the skyline and disappear.